In geology-related sciences, computer-generated models of geological formations or objects, such as oil fields or deposits, or others are employed. Generally, such geological models present the user with a graphical view of a subterranean well, borehole, cavity, channel, formation, fractures, etc.
The geological model may present the user with a large amount of structural detail which extends over a fairly large physical range, such as the model depiction of a well that extends for hundreds of meters or more. The view of that model may encode many details that are shown in terms of gradients or differences in compositions, densities, temperatures, pressures, porosity, and/or other physical or environment features. In some cases, those gradients or fields may be show as color or brightness differences in the model view.
When an analyst or another user wishes to traverse the view to explore various features, look for faults or other anomalies, or perform other modeling tasks, the user may scroll, pan, or otherwise move through the relatively large graphical range of the presented model, in which many areas may be of little or no interest to the user, but which still require the user to navigate through those comparatively low-information regions. This process of navigation may therefore be cumbersome or inconvenient for the user, since a significant amount of manual navigation may be required, and the user has no way to speed up the travel through regions that are of comparatively low interest in order to arrive at more interesting regions.